About, by and/or of - a musical sounding

[Sydney Grew]

Thanks for the clue. I want it to be Delage - is that right? If it isn't then by process of elimination it probably has to be Paul Sordes, but I've no idea what he looked like.

Sorry no, it's neither Delage nor Sordes!

In regard to Alma Mahler, the only thing that has stuck in my mind from a brief perusal of her diary is her description of how she pulled her own teeth out with a piece of string . . .

[amateur51]

post 9 amateur51

There's Alma Mahler's biography of Gustav:

'Gustav Mahler Memories and Letters' trans. by Basil Creighton and abridged from 'Gustav Mahler: erinnerungen und briefe' (1940). The english translation was published by Murray in 1946, I own a copy published in 1947 by The Readers Union and John Murray. I'm ashamed to say I havent read it, but it looks as if you'll get a lot of info about Alma in the course of her carefully filtered (apparently) reminiscences, and the letters section is a large selection of his letters to her.

Cheers, umslo! I'll be all alma-ed out at this rate

Many thanks

[amateur51]

Sorry no, it's neither Delage nor Sordes!

In regard to Alma Mahler, the only thing that has stuck in my mind from a brief perusal of her diary is her description of how she pulled her own teeth out with a piece of string . . .

Wasn't that in Tom Sawyer??

[Nick Armstrong]

Cheers, umslo! I'll be all alma-ed out at this rate

Many thanks

And to complete the process I was given this lovely book as a present some years back:

http://www.amazon.com/Gustav-Mahler-Letters-His-Wife/dp/0801443407

Lots of relevant stuff by and about Alma, as well as lots of writings by GM of course.

I can never work out what I think of Alma...

Anyway I love the idea of this thread, and when I have a few spare brain cells, I hope to contribute!

[Sydney Grew]

. . . Which leaves the first person on the left the mystery man here. . . .

Well - it is Louis Aubert (1877-1968), singer and composer. As a boy treble he took the solo part in the first performance of Fauré's Requiem. And as a pianist he gave in 1911 the first performance of Ravel's Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, a work which is dedicated to him. He became a masterly orchestrator, but left just one opera, La Forêt Bleue, a fairy-tale piece with a happy ending.

Which leaves outstanding just Member Eudaimonia's fascinating quotation in message 15. Only a guess - could it be Fenby writing of Delius?

[Sydney Grew]

v) This should be easy - who is this about?

"The composer came to me dressed as for stalking the folk-song to its home--heavy boots, with soles almost as high as the old-fashioned pattens people wore to lift them out of th emud of unmade roads, a walking-stick that would have been a useful cudgel when following a forest path in the Middle Ages, no overcoat, and a suit of strong, rough cloth. We sat on comfortable lounge chairs, with Leicester Square outside the window, and talked of music in general; but around me was a sense of the largeness and leisure of another world."

(And, probably more difficult, who wrote it?)

[By the way I am at present unable to post any more pictures, due to difficulties with the new ADSL2 which is so far far worse than ADSL1. It seems to exist largely as an Utopian concept in some engineer's mind.]

[Eudaimonia]

Only a guess - could it be Fenby writing of Delius?

No; sorry! Here's another excerpt which might be a little more transparent...

...For his nature too was combined of urgent and tormenting desires for power and pleasure, together with longings for moral enlightenment and release; it was a conflict of passion and desire for peace.

[gradus]

Sydney the reference to folk song and a suit of strong rough cloth suggests (probably wrongly) Vaughan Williams, written by Cecil Sharp?

[Sydney Grew]

Sydney the reference to folk song and a suit of strong rough cloth suggests (probably wrongly) Vaughan Williams, written by Cecil Sharp?

Vaughan Williams Member Gradus, that's right! . . . but not Cecil Sharp; another writer of the '-twenties.

[makropulos]

According to Michael Kennedy, it was none other than Sydney Grew describing RVW.

[makropulos]

[QUOTE=Sydney Grew;53449]Well - it is Louis Aubert (1877-1968), singer and composer. As a boy treble he took the solo part in the first performance of Fauré's Requiem. And as a pianist he gave in 1911 the first performance of Ravel's Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, a work which is dedicated to him. He became a masterly orchestrator, but left just one opera, La Forêt Bleue, a fairy-tale piece with a happy ending.

Ah ! Thanks for that, Sydney. Nice to know what Aubert looked like. That first performance of the Ravel "Valses nobles" was the occasion that audience was asked to guess the identity of the composer and most of them were wildly wrong.